The Feagin Reveal

Feagin told investigators that “when I first started going to (Burke’s) house he had three big jars of weed up in his room. … One day T.J. was talking to me about some illegal stuff. He was under a lot of pressure because of his financial problems.

“I told him that I knew someone who could get him some cocaine. A few days later he asked me if I had talked to the person yet. I called right then and set up a deal.”

Feagin arranged to send $600 to a friend in Florida, whom he identified only as “Tragic.” In exchange, “Tragic” would send an ounce of cocaine to Ann Arbor.

It goes on from there. No cocaine ever showed up, this Burke guy tried to scare/murder Feagin by filling a bottle with gasoline and setting it on fire outside his dorm room, etc, etc, etc. You know, typical college stuff. Except Burke is 26. But whateva, TJ Burke does what he wants, which is apparently spend up to ten years in prison.

Feagin was a last-minute addition to Michigan's first class under Rodriguez when it became clear that Rodriguez wasn't likely to acquire a higher-rated quarterback recruit. He did not work out, obviously. The Freep article dryly notes that Feagin "struggled to learn the playbook" mere paragraphs after describing Feagin's extensive marijuana habit.

The onfield impact of Feagin's departure remains nil; the off-field stuff… well, at least when a Michigan player violates team rules he actually violates them. Woo spin!

But seriously: it's bad. It's also one guy that Michigan apparently didn't run as thorough of a background check on—or possibly any background check on—as they scrambled to reconfigure Rodriguez's first recruiting class. As long as the incident remains isolated, fine. Yes, Kurt Wermers, you get a point, which brings you up to negative four.

haha yeah, I know that. And I had a lot of friends from the east coast. But you're making them out to all be doing coke. But I do appreciate how everyone is telling me to trust them on this issue. You guys don't need to impress other random people online with your 'inside info'. All we know about each other is our avatars...

In all seriousness though, if you want to go with generalizations, aren't the suburbs of Detroit one of the wealthiest suburbs in America? You mean to tell me cocaine isn't a problem in Farmington Hills?

I wish I could say you are right, but I know many at the UM who are using cocaine on a regular basis or used to consume it but stopped after joining one of the San Diego drug rehab centers. We like it or not drug abuse is still very high among some people at UM.

1) There was an article for a Kansas City newspaper last year, a big profile on Rich Rod and how he was settling in at Michigan. It was written by a former sports editor of the Michigan Daily.

Anyway...in part of the article it mentioned how the reporter was kept waiting outside of RR's office because RR had Justin Feagin in and was conselling him. RR's comment was something like "I think Justin is getting a little homesick so I wanted to bring him in to see how he is doing"

So you cant say that RR was not in touch with trying to get the kid acclimated to AA.

The rest is on Feagin...its all his fault...not RRs.

2) This is one kid, and in no way an indication of a pattern in the program.

Lloyd, Moeller, Bo etc. all had kids that were bad and with drug issues and all dealt with them as well.

One incident a pattern does not make, but over the course of RR's career he's made some, *ahem*, questionable decisions with his personnel (and you all know exactly who I'm talking about, so we don't need to go there). I really hope this sort of shit doesn't continue up there; as many have noted, Feagin was a last minute hail-Mary to land a serviceable QB for last season.

Look, mister, there's... two kinds of dumb, uh... guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and barks at the moon, and, uh, guy who does the same thing in my living room. First one don't matter, the second one you're kinda forced to deal with.

I was talking with one of the coaches once 3-4 years back about recruiting, and he was telling me how much work it is because you have to spend so much time checking out a kid's background. He said he talks to all the kid's teachers, coaches, and even the high school janitors. He doesn't want any surprises when the kid gets up to A^2. But even with all the preventative effort sometimes a kid still goes south on you.

But still, one has to wonder if it wasn't maybe a bit of a stretch bringing Justin up in the first place.

Is cocaine done at every campus? Yes. Do football players do it at other schools? Sure.

First, however, I'm not sure D-I football players are brokering deals to bring it across state lines. Feagin's clearly not a drug kingpin here, but again, there is a large legal difference between selling it and using it.

Second, you need to understand that things ARE different when you get caught. My cousin was kicked out of his college because he was caught, by police, smoking a hooka with three friends in his frat house when a fire alarm went off, and they were too stoned to leave.

Did he do something that thousands of other kids at his school were probably doing at that exact moment? No - but he got caught. That does make it a big deal.

I just want to point out that college kids, even smart ones bound for great things, do horrendously stupid things. Guys I went to school with and are now big bankers, lawyers, doctors and in one case a political adviser to a major politician, all did drugs in college. I did drugs in college. I'm saying this not to excuse Feagin's actions, but to contextualize a young man's mistake.

I'm glad RR did the right thing by separating him from the team, but at the same time I know that a lot of people I knew at age 20, had they been subject to the same scrutiny, would have been found out and punished. I just hope this kid finds a way in life, and that Michigan wasn't his only chance.

I think we can be a bit more concerned if similar incidents start cropping up. I knew plenty of kids in college that did stuff like this (not the arson bit). College kids do drugs and think they are invincible.

Feagin was stupid to do it being such a visible representative of the University, but he's just a kid. RR didn't try to cover it up, he didn't make excuses for him. Feagin got booted - good.

If by next year someone was given a new corvette and another student was shot and someone is serving time, then I'm going to be seriously concerned about the culture of the Michigan program. Right now though, it was just a kid being stupid, getting caught and being punished for it.

yeah, they do drug test. If I recall correctly, every few weeks there would be a random list of names at a practice and if you were on it, you had to go piss in a cup. Then it would be a different set of names the next time around.

On the one hand, I do generally expect a head coach to be held responsible for every aspect of his program, and an arrest record seems to be a basic fundamental sort of thing you'd check for on every recruit.

On the other, I seem to remember Brian's theme when Feagin was recruited being something along the lines of "can't help but root for this guy." Feagin had a lot of us charmed and we hadn't even met him. Who's to say RR didn't do his due diligence, and Feagin explained away the arrests the same way he did to the police in that story: "Nothing ever came of it." Just some police pickin' on a black kid, maybe.